Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 1328 GMT (2128 HKT) August 11, 2022

Ex-Trump attorney: What Trump fears the most about the FBI search 01:28

(CNN)The FBI and the Justice Department are damned if they do and damned if they don't on the question of whether to promptly explain in public why they searched for missing documents at former President Donald Trump's Florida resort.Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing a cacophony of demands from Republicans to address the operation, including being threatened with withering oversight if the GOP wins the House in November's midterm election.His failure to do so already has created a vacuum filled by Trump's fury, misrepresentations of the search and now conspiracy theories that the bureau planted incriminating evidence at the home of the former President.The conservative media machine is in meltdown mode. Several of the most pro-Trump lawmakers and pundits who excoriated liberal "defund the police" rhetoric are now demanding the defunding and the flushing out of the FBI. This is quite a slogan for a party that prides itself on supporting law and order. And it could portend serious damage to the bureau under a potential future Republican Congress or president -- not to mention the neutering of the country's capacity to fight foreign espionage, violent crime, drug trafficking and domestic extremism